Reply #122: Much Of the Worst Started With Reagan

[Rozlee]

I was raised in the 60s in Stockdale, Tx., a poor Texas town where Hispanics, like me and Blacks were seen as less than dust. But, my Dad was the only plumber in town and we did OK. Our school janitor, Willie, was Black, and he had a nice, but tiny home with about six kids and his wife didn't work, except to take in a little sewing on the side. Once Willie gave my mother a ride to the TB hospital in San Antonio and stopped in the East Side of town, in what I recognize now as the worse side of town, to drop off some second hand clothes to some poor relations (really poor) and they all lived practically in shanties. But, they were kind to my mother realizing that she was very ill and the men gave me bread which to me was a wild treat since all we ate were tortillas. Flash forward to 1986, when I was fresh out of the Regular Army and living in that side of town in public housing during the Reagan recession, with Reagan having gotten rid of community gyms, and midnight basketball which gave much of the community after school recreation, and having set the mentally ill out of the hospitals and into the streets. There were no large grocery stores nearby such as Kroger, HEB, or KMart that would hire people and give them reasonable prices in shopping for essentials. All they had were convenience stores that had sky rocketing costs and were real rip offs. All the good jobs were in the white flight parts of town. The housing areas during Reagan's reign were ripped of their funding, welfare was slashed due to the myth of the Cadillac driving Welfare Queen and food stamps were cut and ketchup was mused as a possibility as a vegetable. The resentment and crime in those areas skyrocketed as it did among the next generation of my family that had moved to the Hispanic West Side of town in San Antonio that suffered the same fate. I worked as a dishwasher in the Hyatt Regency where I had to submit to sexual harassment and acts of the worst kind from the manager and don't even talk about suing. At that time, it wasn't an option and I had two small children to support. I joined the Army Reserves to supplement my income and also caught the eye of one of the well-to-do guests at the Hyatt, and we were married. But, many of my nephews and nieces still live in some of those hellholes. Two of my nephews have clawed their way out by joining the Coast Guard, but two others are members of the Cholo gang. I was shocked to find out that one of them actually voted. This downward slide all started during Reagan's and the Republicans' rule. The difference is that now, the new Republicans are trying to make the middle class and everyone else, live the same way. It's about bleeding us all dry, one class at a time until only one class has everything--theirs.